Many people need to take medication at prescribed intervals. These intervals may range from two hours or less, up to several weeks. Some people find it difficult to remember to take their medication at the appropriate time. Adverse health consequences can result from forgetting or delaying the consumption of medication. People may forget or delay the consumption of drugs because of advanced age, senility, or loss of memory due to disease. In particular, some persons find it necessary to take medication on a continual basis throughout their life. Even persons who are normally not forgetful may occasionally forget their medication because they become busy or just from normal human forgetfulness.
It would be desirable if there were a simple, reliable means for reminding people to take their medicine at the proper time. There have been attempts in the past to incorporate into the cap of a container of medicine a means for reminding people to take the medicine.
U.S. 2002/0126585 to Osberg et al describes a prior art device that incorporates within a cap a clock that displays to the user the amount of time elapsed since the cap was last removed. The clock is automatically reset by removing and replacing the cap on its container. While this device tracks the time elapsed since medicine was last taken, it does not signal the user to take the next dose and the user may forget or delay the next dose.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,953,288 to Chappell describes a prior art device that incorporates within a cap a clock that displays the time and date that the cap was last removed, allowing the user to see when medication was last taken. The user is not reminded when the next dose is due to be taken.
Other prior art devices are user-programmable and will signal the user when a programmed time has elapsed. These programmable units are too complex for some users to program properly. For example, people with arthritis and poor vision may find it difficult to see the programming mechanism and operate it successfully with arthritic hands. Pharmacists may be reluctant to provide these caps to some people and they may be commercially unviable for this reason.
There has been a long-felt need in this art for a device usable with containers of medicine that will reliably signal the user each time medication should be taken and which is very simple and reliable to use. Preferably, the device should reliably operate without any control inputs from the consumer; and only a simple choice and verification by the pharmacist. There has been a need in the art for a cap with a timed signaling function that is reliable, easy to dispense, and relatively simple to manufacture.
As used in this patent application, the word “cap” designates any means used to close any commercially-available pharmaceutical or medicinal container, bottle or vial, including those that incorporate a so-called “child-resistant” or “child-proof” mechanism. Caps may be of the screw-on variety, pop-on variety, or may be of the twist-and-lift variety. The cap may or may not be attached to the vial in some manner. However, the word “cap”, as used herein, is not limited to only these types of caps.